


The Night Keeps Fetching Stars

by Smilla



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 2007, Challenge:picfor1000, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-04
Updated: 2010-06-04
Packaged: 2017-10-09 21:55:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/92013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smilla/pseuds/Smilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a sudden passage from sleep to awareness at the first hint of smoke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Night Keeps Fetching Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://smilla02.livejournal.com/68629.html)  
> With many thanks to desertport for beta'ing and so much more.

_Fire robs Dean of his words. His memories are a confused mix of cold -- on his right side, exposed to the chilling night -- and heat -- on his left side where Dad's cradling a sleeping Sammy._

_The noise is too loud. _

Hush, you're going to wake little Sammy.

_For years there'd been a dream too. Of a summer lasting a single day._

***

It's not the scream, panicked and high pitched filtering through the paper-thin walls that awakens Dean. It's the sudden passage from sleep to awareness at the first hint of smoke. Sam is just a step behind, moves urgently, goes for the laptop first, and the scattered notes of their hunt. Dean haphazardly gathers their clothes.

Both break salt lines carefully laid around their beds.

They're fast. They leave the room in a whirl of shirts flapping sharply against their naked sides.

The room they have rented is on the fourth floor, the hotel unkempt with slime and grime too ancient to be masked by heavy doses of bleach.

The fire must be bad because Dean can feel the pressure of it building in the rush of hot air, heralding itself with thick, oily smoke and feeding off plastic and cheap wallpaper.

Dean looks out for Sam. And he is just a step ahead, tall and striding self-contained amid the confusion and panic.

Dean looks out for Sam, and _thankgodthank_, he's just a step ahead.

***

_It's night. It always is. Silent but for the low crunching of wood consumed by the fire. They wait for the flames to die, wait for the wood and skin and fur to be only red embers painting arcane trails in the air._

_Dad is silent on the other side of it, alternating between watching Dean and watching the fire, eyes carrying an unreadable look different somehow from the slow, omnipresent burn of vengeance Dean's used to seeing there._

_But Dean is high with adrenaline and fear, a newfound taste of joy bitter and sweet on his mouth. It leaves him hard and shamed and feeling as if he's running too fast for the world to catch up._

***

The stairs are the tricky part. Dean had muttered a curse on their way up, when he'd been tired and frustrated. But Sam had looked at him, sighed in the way that made clear that he thought Dean was being uselessly picky and had taken the stairs two steps at time, leaving behind a trail of low noted-laughs.

But the stairs _are_ the tricky part, clogged with people in the narrow space, smell of unwashed skin mixing with the smoke spiraling upward in blackish wisps. It is a various humanity screaming and fearing in languages Dean doesn't understand: sweet-voweled Spanish and harsh, thick-accented Russian. He remembers abruptly that he heard a baby wailing right before sleep put him under.

It's Sam who directs him toward what must be the emergency exit, and Dean shakes his head because he's not supposed to lose his cool in matters of fire, but it's happening.

It is.

***

_Sam fights him with long arms and hands clawing at his back. Dean hears nothing against the roar of the fire and the scream erupting from Sam's throat. He wishes he could tune it out. The high-pitched, desperate sound coming from Sam's mouth._

_It is harder this time dragging Sam out of the fire. There are hard bones and strong muscle where once had been soft skin and the smell of talc._

***

The emergency exit is blocked. Dean almost laughs at the face Sam makes when he finds a wall instead of a window. He knows the laugh has made it to his mouth when Sam looks at him with too large eyes. But now the gates are open and Dean can't stop laughing, and he doesn't care that he's letting the smoke in because someone has a wicked sense of humor and it is just too fucking funny that, of all things, this is what is going to put them down.

He wants to tell Sam, but Sam's dragging him back to the stairs.

A grip, like a band of iron, around his left wrist.

***

_Dean knows fire. How to make one burn so high that all it leaves behind are minuscule particles of ashes. Dean knows fire and he knows how to make sure that Dad's body burns fast. _

***

Dean feels the bag slide from his shoulder somewhere between the fourth and the second row of stairs. He doesn't stop to pick it up. Not that Sam's slowing down enough for him to stop.

Too bad. Sam's just lost the girly shirt with the big flowery cuffs Dean's wanted to burn since the first time he saw him wearing it. Dean wants to laugh at the small victory. Instead he droops under the weight of the heat, the pressure of the dark that Dean's sure will swallow him whole if Sam lets go of his wrist.

***

_It takes Dean three energetic tries to snuff out the last candle. Mom claps, Dad says you're a big boy, rests his hand on Mom's funnily swollen belly like he always does now._

_Mom rolls her eyes and makes a face at Dean, shoos Dad away, gives Dean the biggest slice of cake. _

_Dean closes his eyes so he can watch again the four points of light dancing happily against his eyelids. _

***

There's soot on Sam's face, large grey smears and dark lines like ink pooling in the creases around his eyes, in the laugh lines around his mouth; it makes Sam's red-rimmed eyes shine bright. People are screaming around them, inhaling clean air and sputtering out the smoke in a cacophony of harsh coughs.

Dean has to pull his arm twice before Sam lets go of his wrist, and he winces when Dean massages the bruise his grip has left there.

Sam looks back at the building, at the flames spilling over from the windows. Looks back at Dean with a slow triumphant smile.


End file.
